aid Kink.

"Kinky dear," said Janet, "is it something awfully exciting?"

"Nothing very exciting about a house, that I know of, Miss Janet," said
Kink.

"A house!" cried Janet. "It couldn't have been a house!"

"There's all sorts of houses," said Kink; "there's houses on the ground
and there's houses on--"

"O Kinky," cried Hester, "I know!"

And she clapped her hands and absolutely screamed. "I know. It's a
caravan!"

"A caravan!" the children shouted together, and with one movement they
dashed off to see.

Old Kink laughed and Mrs. Avory laughed.

"It's a caravan right enough," he said. "And a very pretty one too, and
none of they nasty gypsies in it neither."

"But where does it come from?" Mrs. Avory asked, and in reply Kink
handed her the letter; but she had done no more than open it when Janet
ran back to drag her to see the wonderful sight.

Gregory, I need hardly say, was already on the box with the whip in his
hand, while all the others were inside, except Horace Campbell, who had
climbed on the roof, and was telephoning down the chimney. The men and
horse that had brought it were gone.

"Oh, mother," cried Hester, "whose is it? Is it ours?"

"I expect the letter tells us everything," said Mrs. Avory, and,
sitting on the top of the steps, she unfolded the letter, and, after
looking through, read it aloud.

This is what it said:

DEAR CHILDREN,

"It has long been my wish to give you a new kind of present, but I have
hitherto had no luck. I thought once of an elephant, and even wrote to
Jamrach about the idea--a small elephant, not a mountain---but I gave
that up. Chiswick is too crowded, and your garden is too small. But now
I think I have found the very thing. A caravan. It belonged to a lady
artist, who, having to live abroad, wished to sell it; and it is now
yours. I tell you this so that mother need not be afraid that it is
dirty. It should reach you this week, and can stand in the old coach
house until you are ready to set forth on the discovery of your native
land. I should have liked also to have added a horse and a man; but you
must do that and keep an account of what everything costs, and let me
know when I come back from abroad. I shall expect some day a long
account of your adventures, and if you keep a logbook, so much the
better.

"I am,
"Your true, if unsettling, friend,
"X.

"P.S.--You will find a use for the enclosed key sooner or later, and if
you want to write t